‘Listen, Sharon, do what you’ve got to do, sort out whatever’s going on in your life and then come back to work.’ She was heavenly to me.
Now the only immediate problem to solve was, where did I go?
We loved the house in Hidden Hills, but just as the kids had warned us, it was too cut off out there. If you’re taking life easy, it’s perfect. But Ozzy was either writing the album or on tour, and I was doing a daily show in central LA, and the location of the house was adding around ninety minutes to my journey time. Invariably we’d end up staying in our small, one-bedroom apartment in Sierra Towers. It was a fun and interesting place to be – Elton had a place there, as well as Courteney Cox, and Cher – but it was tiny, and when me and Ozzy were there, plus our housekeeper Saba and probably one or two of the kids at any given time, it was ridiculously cramped. So a couple of months earlier I had put Hidden Hills on the market and found a readily available house to rent in Walden Drive, Beverly Hills.
It was a Spanish-style, two-storey house, set back from the road behind a cluster of small trees and bushes. Consequently it was pretty gloomy inside, which proved rather fitting considering the state of our marriage. This meant that, having left my husband sleeping at Hidden Hills, I still had two other properties to choose from, but instead I checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel. I’d been staying there since I was a teenager and it had always been my home from home in LA. I felt comfortable there.
What was I to do? Was I to tell the kids? Was I to tell Tony and Geezer? Was I to tell our friends? I was numb. Ozzy had been clean for seven years. It had taken so long to get there. So much heartache and pain for us. So much effort from him to get himself sober. Every day it’s hard work to battle those demons, and he’d done it. I had just presumed that he was sailing. That he was on the right road. That he was on skis going down the perfect slope. He’d got his dignity back, he’d regained his respect. He was a stronger man, mentally and physically. Now he’d thrown all that away. And at this point in his life, he was a man with great principles. He was a force to be reckoned with. He wasn’t playing the victim or a clown any more, he was his own man. And he was a beacon of hope for so many people in positions similar to his; living proof that you never give up.
Through all of these dark thoughts I remembered everything I’d learnt going to family week at rehab. That this is a disease. A devastating, painful disease. I just wanted to take him in my arms and cuddle him and tell him, ‘It’s going to be all right.’ The saddest thing was having to tell the kids and our friends. I knew I had to. To keep it secret would have been the worst thing to do because you’re protecting that person. And everybody was so disappointed and sad for him.
Over the next couple of days, Ozzy left Hidden Hills and went to the house in Walden Drive. And so I met up with him. His attitude at that time was, ‘What the fuck? I had a slip. Forget it. I’m never doing it again.’ But his ‘slip’, I calculated, had lasted seven months. From his journals I’d found out that he’d started drinking the previous January. Seven months of abusing himself and living a lie and fucking with my head out of guilt. Because every time he saw me he was cold and confrontational, looking for an argument, looking to fight. I’d been thirty-two years with this man. He’d always said we were like bread and butter. We were a team. Again, I wasn’t going to walk away because my heart went out to him. And besides, we had a wedding to look forward to. Jack was getting married on 7 October.
So I said to him, get back on your AA twelve-step programme. We’ll give you all the emotional support you need. Your family, your friends, Tony and Geezer, we’re all here for you.
I let him live with that, to think about the implications, for a couple of days. And then I went to stay with Jack, giving Ozzy time to himself. This time my kids were there to support me. The timing just sucked with everything that had gone on that year. We didn’t need this shit, any of us.
I went back to Ozzy, a couple of days after he promised me that he would go right back to day one of the AA twelve-step recovery programme and work on staying clean and sober. Given everything I had learnt about his addiction over the years, I knew that for Ozzy it was the only thing that worked. It’s a code you live by, dealing not only with your addiction but also with you as a human being: the way you think, the way you behave and the way you treat other people in your life. You either live by it, or you don’t. It’s like the Ten Commandments, except that there are twelve of them.
Despite their sadness and their disappointment in him, the kids were very much of the mindset that we all had to help him get through this dark period. None of them urged me to leave him. They were upset with their dad for all the bullshit, for not being honest, but then people who are using don’t tend to be.
Now that everything was out in the open, it explained a lot, because as much as he hadn’t been there for me in recent months, he hadn’t been there for them either. It’s the knock-on effect. Dad’s not coming for Sunday lunch; Dad’s not coming to Aimee/Kelly/Jack’s because he’s tired; Dad’s sleeping; Dad’s stressed because of the album; Dad’s under so much pressure. They had heard this for so much of their lives, and recently they’d been hearing it again.
I would see their faces, especially the girls’. Dad doesn’t call. Dad doesn’t text. Have I done something wrong? So even though there was now an explanation for all those disappointments, it was a fine line between a sense of relief that it wasn’t something they’d done and a sadness that yet again so much quality time they could have shared with him had been lost to his addiction.
And me? I felt a wave of relief too. After all, I could now tell myself that all of the vitriol I had endured for the past few months hadn’t been because he didn’t love me any more. The slow and painful disintegration of our marriage hadn’t happened because of anything I had done or hadn’t done, it was because of the drugs, the alcohol, his addiction.
‘Sharon, I’m working this programme. I’m clean, I will stay clean and I will do whatever I have to do to keep this family together,’ he told me.
‘OK, but I need to see real change, Ozzy. I need to see progress. I need to see you grow as a human being. When it’s one of the kids’ birthdays and I ask you what we should do for them, have a fucking view other than, “I dunno.” In other words, rejoin the world or don’t bother.’
Anyway, Ozzy stayed at the dark house on Walden Drive and for the next couple of weeks, I dotted between Jack and Lisa’s place, the hotel, Aimee’s for a while and being back out with America’s Got Talent, honouring my contract until I could get the hell out of there.
In the meantime, it was Aimee who came up with the idea that her parents should go to therapy together, for what my generation would call marriage guidance. We had never done it before; the old Ozzy wouldn’t even have contemplated it. But to my surprise, he agreed to start straight away.
He really tried hard to answer the questions and open up. But I could tell that he absolutely hated it. He’d done therapy in the past, but that was to do with addiction. This was different. He didn’t like exposing himself, and I get that. Ozzy has always found it difficult to talk about emotions.
Inevitably, we’d miss an appointment, or forget one. Then he was out of town, or I was out of town, and so it just got whittled away. In the end, I think we managed about four sessions. And what did I learn about my husband after thirty years of sharing the same bed? Not a fucking thing.
But what the hell; I moved back into Walden Drive anyway, and we muddled along for a bit until Ozzy started work, recording 13 with Tony and Geezer and Rick in Malibu. At least I had something to look forward to. A wedding in Hawaii.
13
Something Old, Something New
The groom and his proud mum.
Jack and Lisa were married on 7 October 2012, at the Four Seasons Resort in Hualalai, Big Island, Hawaii.
Hawaii is the most exquisite of places. In fact, Ozzy and I got married on the island of Maui in 1982, and they say that if you get ma
rried in Hawaii you will return there constantly. And it’s certainly been true for us. We must have been back at least twenty times since the kids were born, and they have spent so many joyous holidays there, with friends and family members joining us, over the years. It was a huge part of all our lives.
Lisa had never been to Hawaii, but Jack had painted this picture for her of beauty and romance and she was ecstatic to be getting married there. Jack knew exactly what he wanted. The previous year he’d been to the wedding of a friend who got married on the beach under two arching trees that meet in the middle, known as ‘the love trees’. The beach faced west and they had got married at sunset. Although it had been very low-key, Jack said it was magnificent and that, if ever he got married, it would be there.
The great thing about having a wedding away from home is that you don’t feel obliged to ask everyone you have ever met, and nobody feels slighted if they’re not invited.
So it was a comparatively small wedding. Small but very special: forty-eight of Jack’s closest family and friends flew in three days before. This was going to be a real celebration. Unlike ours.
The night before the big day, we all gathered on the beach for a candlelit supper. It was perfection. The sea shimmered in the light of a dozen or more tiki torches, six-foot-high flaming sentinels running the length of the beach. As the staff made the final preparations, we sat barefoot on the sand, silently watching baby turtles that had just hatched going in and out of the surf, trying out their new swimming skills. It was the perfect night, warm yet with a breeze coming off the ocean. The restaurant behind us was open to the sky – later, the stars – and the sounds of the sea. The dinner was Lisa’s, from the flower arrangements on the tables and the music to the food that we ate. It was all done with such delicacy and care. She’s only twenty-four and this was the first time she’d ever hosted anything like it, and she did it absolutely beautifully.
During the wonderful dinner, I spent my time table-hopping, catching up with friends I hadn’t seen in a while and getting to know Lisa’s family. As the night wore on, with the sound of laughter and tinkling glasses in my ears, I walked towards the shore, sat cross-legged on the sand and gazed back at the glow of the party that lit up the night. Amid the throng of guests, I made out Lisa and Jack sitting with Lisa’s parents. They looked so happy. It was as if I was seeing them in slow motion. They were laughing and relaxed, the sounds of their voices lost in the general hubbub. And looking at them, so happy and carefree, part of me was jealous. But another part of me was thankful, grateful that my son had married into this warm, close-knit family. They were all grounded people.
Inevitably, I thought back to my own wedding, over thirty years before. It was the same sea, the same landscape but it was as different as night from day. Ours was a typical rock ’n’ roll wedding. No friends, just band and crew, and of course my miserable parents with their sarcastic remarks throughout the day. And I thought too of my dress, held together with two safety pins, and of my wedding night spent alone while my new husband was on the piss. And I was thankful for having Lisa in Jack’s life.
I started to cry, and didn’t stop for about thirty-six hours.
Breakfast the next morning had the air of a festival about it. Everyone knew each other. Children were rushing around, and the atmosphere was heady with excitement. Jack and Lisa had wanted the ceremony to feel intimate, and it was. No strangers, only people who were there because they were important in Jack and Lisa’s lives. I know it’s a cliché, but, Osbournes or Stellys, we really were one big happy family. Around us, the staff were busy threading fairy lights through the love trees. The canopy where Lisa and Jack would make their vows was being laced with exotic flowers. Lisa and her mum and sisters were having their hair done in the beauty salon, having manicures and pedicures. I was catching up with my niece Gina who had come all the way from England with her husband and their gorgeous children, who were now as besotted with Pearl as the rest of us.
And then the head of hotel security said he needed a word with Jack and me. There were now about ten paparazzi, he explained, staking out positions around the grounds. As they were booked into the hotel, nothing could be done to stop them. In any case, the beaches were all public. Under Hawaiian law, they had as much right to be there as we did. I couldn’t bear it. Everything had been planned around a wedding on the beach between the love trees. The children had grown up with the story of Ozzy’s and my wedding on the beach in Maui, and Jack had so wanted to do it the same way. But the last thing in the world they needed was to have complete strangers clicking away during the most solemn and joyous occasion of their young lives. So, with only a few hours to go, we worked with the hotel to come up with another location, which was private while keeping that special ambience of marrying in the open air.
While the ceremony had been planned to take place on the beach, the reception was to be held in a private area of the hotel grounds. So the decision was made to turn that into the wedding area. Everything had to be moved, the most complicated feature being the canopy with its festoons of tropical ferns and flowers.
I can’t deny that I was desperately disappointed, because I so wanted Jack’s vision of a wedding on a beach. That being said, it was still a magical ceremony. Lisa’s niece and nephews were the flower girl and pages. Her bridesmaids were her three sisters and Kelly. And Jack’s best man was Jamie Heffron, who he first met at nursery school aged three, and who he’s been friends with ever since.
The wedding took place one hour before sunset, in front of an altar crafted from the island’s ferns, hibiscus and orchids. The lawn beneath their feet was scattered with thousands of white orchid petals, fashioning a floral aisle between the rows of simple bamboo chairs placed either side for guests.
Ozzy accompanied Lisa’s mother down the aisle, I accompanied Jack down the aisle and Lisa’s father naturally walked her down the aisle. They were married by Ryan de Rouen, Lisa’s brother-in-law, her sister Betsey’s husband. He’s young and handsome and, like the rest of their family, comes from Louisiana. I have to say that if he preached near where I lived, I’d be there every week. What he said was heart-warming, funny and loving. And the whole time I was weeping like a fool.
Jack wore a blue suit with white Converse trainers – a step up from his original choice of footwear, Birkenstocks – as did his best man Jamie, whose friendship, as Jack described it on the day, was ‘mostly aided by the amount of time we stood together outside the headmaster’s office’.
Lisa looked like a fairy princess in a white silk gown with a full skirt of billowing white tulle. Her hand-stitched veil cascaded down her back in fabulous contrast to her rich, dark hair, which was beautifully styled in a chic bob. Unlike so many people who get married with some fucking cottage loaf on their heads then regret it every time they look at their wedding photos, she had wisely kept her look natural. But then she’s a model and an actress, so she knows what suits her.
And little Pearly Queen, our darling baby granddaughter, looked utterly edible in a cream dress, teensy-weensy white sandals and a cute lace ‘tiara’ perched on her then hairless head.
They exchanged rings, both engraved inside with the words You are all I see from their favourite song, Queen’s ‘You’re My Best Friend’. That said it all about these two. Yes, they’re deeply in love, but they are also great mates who watch out for each other. As Lisa said at the time, they had already been through a lifetime’s worth of problems in the previous year, so you just know that they have what it takes to endure.
There was one guest who failed to enter into the spirit of the occasion. Here we were, in this tropical idyll, yet the groom’s father was being snappy and sarcastic. And not just with me: it was with pretty much everyone.
With our families coming together, there were guests who, at the beginning, we didn’t know well or even at all. So I found myself overcompensating for Ozzy’s behaviour by laughing hysterically at anything anyone said in a bid to cover up the fact that he
was being such an unpleasant shit. I didn’t confront him because I didn’t want to provoke something even worse. It would only have been the more acutely embarrassing for everyone. I understood that social functions like weddings are hard for alcoholics, because they have to sit there with a glass of juice or water in their hands while everyone else knocks back wine and cocktails. So I put his irritability down to that.
He was fine with Jack and Lisa themselves. Even he couldn’t be such an arse that he’d spoil his own son’s wedding with his moody shit – but, at best, he was still remote, slightly removed from the occasion, just not connecting. If I found myself anywhere near him, I felt my body tense up, so I kept out of his way as much as possible. I have never been much good at hiding my emotions, and after the ceremony was over and my new daughter-in-law came over to hug me, I knew that my eyes were puffed and blotchy, and when we pulled apart, she looked perplexed.
‘I just have to ask… are these tears of joy, or tears of sorrow?’
‘Joy,’ I smiled, but the truth was that it was a bit of both. Happiness at their marriage, sadness at the state of Ozzy’s and mine. It should have been one of the happiest days of our lives; instead, we sleepwalked through it like two strangers.
As a special wedding memento, we had bought Jack a Tiffany watch and Lisa a gold Tiffany locket. Correction; I had bought them and added Ozzy’s name to the card. He was so detached at the time that if you asked him now what we’d bought, he wouldn’t have a clue.
It’s funny, we all grow up witnessing the pattern of our parents’ behaviour towards each other, and some of us repeat it whether we want to or not and some of us kick against it and plough a new furrow for ourselves. Jack is the latter. And he has married a woman who is beautiful on the inside and the outside, someone who comes from a normal, loving family and is calm personified.
Unbreakable: My New Autobiography Page 14
